Do you know with whom I have just had endless conversations about
you, in sight of Lisbon and Gibraltar? With that kind, excellent,
and original Blavoyer, the Ahasuerus of commerce, whom I had
already met several times without recognising him, until at last
I remembered our dinners at the "Ecu" (Crown) at Geneva, and the
famous Pipe!
During the month's voyage from Lisbon to Barcelona we emptied I
cannot tell you how many bottles of sherry in your honor and
glory; and one fine evening he confided to me in so simple and
charming a manner his vexation at being unable to find several
letters that you had written to him in Russia, I think, and which
have been stolen from him, that I took a liking to him, and he
did the same to me. The fact is that there could not possibly be
two Blavoyers under the sun, and his own person is the only
pattern of which he cannot furnish goods wholesale, for there is
no sort of thing that he does not supply to all parts of the
globe.
A propos of Lisbon and supplies, have you a taste for camellias?
It would be a great pleasure to me to send you a small cargo of
them from Oporto, but I did not venture to do it without knowing,
in case you might perhaps have a decided antipathy to them.
In spite of the disinterestedness with which I began this letter,
I come round, almost without knowing how, to beg you to write to
me. Don't do more than you like; but in any case forgive me for
growing old and arriving at the point when noble recollections
grow in proportion as the narrowing meannesses of daily life find
their true level. Yes, even if you thought me more of a fool than
formerly, it would be impossible for me to hold your friendship
cheap, or not to prize highly the fact that, somehow or other, it
has not come to be at variance nor entirely at an end.
As the exigencies of my profession will not allow me leisure to
return so soon to Paris, I shall probably not have the
opportunity of seeing you for two years. Towards the middle of
July I go to Bonn for the inauguration of the Beethoven Monument.
Were it not that a journey to the Rhine is so commonplace, I
should beg you to let me do the honors of the left and of the
right bank to you, as well as to Chopin (a little less badly than
I was able to do the honors of Geneva!). My mother and my
children are to join me at Cologne in five or six weeks, but I
cannot hope for such good luck as that we might meet in those
parts, although after your winters of work and fatigue a journey
of this kind would be a refreshing distraction for you both.
